In Switzerland three anti-G8 activists are now being brought to court by the Swiss Authorities. On the 1st of June 2003, an international affinity group blockaded the motorway in order to stop an official delegation from reaching the g8 in Evian. Two climbers suspended themselves from a single rope being stretched across the street. Nevertheless a police officer cut the rope and sent Martin plummeting 20 metres into a shallow, rocky stream beneath the bridge, while Gesine was saved by the quick reflexes of her support team who managed to grab a hold of the rope. The Aubonne support group are inviting everyone to take part in a public presence outside the courthouse in Nyon on the day of the trial or be in solidarity at your local Swiss embassy.

On March 8th 2004, women around the world in LA, England, Argentina, Uganda,
Peru, Philadelphia, San Francisco, in Guyana, in southern India, in Trinidad
and Tobago, in Spain, women will be staging the 5th Global Women's Strike.
A movement involving women in some sixty countries many involved in
grassroots organizations. Fighting for payment for housework, for clean
safe water resources, for housing, education, gender justice, and peace. In
a world where war is now our norm, the Global Women's Strike is part of the
vast throng against war and occupation. Not only in Iraq, but in Palestine,
in Columbia, in the Congo and in Kashmir. Their organizing slogan, which
unites strikers from a broad array of struggles, is deceptively simple:
'Invest in Caring not Killing.'

Events have been going on this weekend, and the main event is at Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Monday the 8th, International Women's Day. Read the events calendar for details.

The last remaining Tongva/Gabrielino cemetary in LA County is being excavated and moved to make room for a creek, that, in turn, is being diverted to allow the development of Playa Vista, the infamous housing development on the Ballona Wetlands near Playa del Rey.

The archeologists and a crew of 70 people are removing human remains and putting them into boxes, and shipping them to UCSB for later "study." The grave goods and funerary objects are put in other boxes to be "studied" in other places. Separating these remains from funerary objects is illegal. Over 120 graves have been found, and the number keeps increasing.

The State Historic Preservation Officer has the power to stop the excavation and development, but has thus far remained silent. Weekly vigils at the site are held from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. at the Loyola Marymount University entrance, at Lincoln and 83rd St.Another vigil is held from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the corner of Bienvenida and Mountain Shadow.

Allegations Fly: Hatian "Revolt" Was A US-Supported Coup, Not A Popular Uprising

Numerous reports are coming out that the US was involved in the coup of Aristide. According to these reports, and the ZNet backgrounder referenced before, this could possibly a business-motivated coup supported by the US, and not a bourgeois uprising against failed social policies.

The biggest question is why the American liberal establishment goes along with the right-wing Republicans in this - and why even most of the vanishing "left" in the U.S. is either silent or wrings its hands at Aristide's failures. An incredibly effective disinformation campaign in almost all U.S. media is probably the answer: Aristide has been constructed as a tyrant, and hence all opposition to him is justified. Amy Willenz' piece this week in the New York Times is the latest illustration of this. Willenz, who documented the U.S. game since Duvalier in The Rainy Season, reasons that Aristide has betrayed the Haitian people who brought him to power in the first place. To a great extent she is right because Aristide was playing his own "double game" - seeking to keep some shreds of his original platform to bring dignity and equity to Haiti's poor, while having to capitulate to U.S. demands for privatization and structural adjustment in order to hold on to power. Like Powell, Willenz, too, rejects violent regime change. But like Powell, reading between her lines one gets the clear warning. He must go voluntarily, or he will be pushed - no matter what the cost in Haitian lives, and no matter what the Haitian people want. -- From Tom Reeves' article (linked).